Comforter
by SaturnOolaa
Summary: Kira comes to visit. Matsumoto offers him manjuu, conversation, and alchohol. [Spoilers for the entire Soul Society arc.]


Disc: Not my characters.  
AN: So, uh, I read Chapter 181 and was struck by Matsumoto and Kira's little "girlfriends!" interlude. This fic takes place between Kira coming in and both of them getting drunk. It's gen, but presupposes a sexual relationship between Kira and Gin, so if that's not your bag... you can stop reading. Or you can keep reading. Whichever you choose. This is my first Bleach fic. These guys are pretty low on my giant list of favourite characters, but I really love them nonetheless, so I'm happy I got to write about them. Enjoy the story.

COMFORTER

The room is pristinely clean and exactly the temperature a room should be. Flowers are arranged aesthetically in their vases. It is like a normal mid-morning. This doesn't help Matsumoto.

Her eyes don't seem to focus on the real world today. Her mind wanders through the same paths again and again; she has found herself in a state of shock, waiting for the moment things will once more seem real to her. She doesn't feel tired. She feels as though she is already asleep.

It's funny, the way things are. She would always have pegged herself as the more detatched, the more apathetic between the two of them, but now...

She can't put the pieces together in her mind. Or maybe she simply doesn't want to.

"Thank you for the food."

Kira eats his soba manjuu in a way that suggests he feels guilty for being hungry at such a time. He has always looked a little bit gloomy, but now the bags beneath his eyes make him look almost pathetically sad. All his movements are tiny and polite. He seems to have shunk since the last time they met.

"How's Hinamori?" she asks, not because she doesn't know the answer but because she needs something sensible to say.

The last of the manjuu disappears into Kira's mouth. He wipes his lips with the back of his hand. "The same. They don't know if she'll... they don't know what will happen."

Matsumoto nods. "I see." Poor Hinamori. Thinking of her, betrayed by her own Captain, lying in the medical ward dead to the world, is somehow painful. They were never very close. Then again, she has started to feel closer to everyone in the Soul Society now that they have a common enemy. And that puts her at Gin again.

Really, she can't control her own mind today.

"I'm sorry," says Kira suddenly. He bows low on the floor, so that his face almost touches the tatami. "For what I did. I never should have trusted him."

Feeling profoundly awkward, Matsumoto reaches over and taps him on the shoulder as an invitation to rise. She's never comfortable with people bowing. "What choice did you have? He was your Captain. It was your duty to trust him."

Kira winces. "But if I had been thinking right, I would have questioned him at some point. Instead, I followed him, even when I wasn't sure what was going on... as always, I..." he makes a weak hand gesture in the hopes that she will understand him, "I let him control me."

Ah, thinks Matsumoto. And there we have it.

She had noticed, of course, the angry bruises on Kira's neck that were just barely visible below his collar, or the way Gin found excuses to touch him and make him shiver. She just hadn't thought it important. Really, she didn't care about Gin's indiscretions, because her thoughts on the subject of Gin had nothing to do with sex. She supposes she could have been a little jealous if there had been some sense of companionship between them, but she had assumed that sex was all it was.

That assumption was unfair to Kira. Now she knows it was likely more true than she thought.

"I'm thinking of handing in my resignation," continues Kira, snapping her back from her thoughts. "Although I don't know who will take it, now."

Matsumoto narrows her eyes at him. "What are you talking about?" she asks, almost berating him, forgetting that they are of the same rank. "You can't resign now! The Divisions are in chaos! Whatever's decided, nobody has time to deal with a Vice Captain's resignation on top of everything else..."

"Maybe you're right," says Kira. He looks a little relieved. She always had pegged him as good at taking orders. "But I'm not sure what else I could do."

"Just stand by your post." Matsumoto gives him a wry smile. "That's all anyone can do, now, at least until things are sorted out."

Kira is silent for a few moments. His hands wander his lap. He has so many nervous habits, thinks Matsumoto, wondering if he is thinking of Gin, of his hands. She wonders what she would see if she could peer into his mind.

Then again, if she could do that, they wouldn't be here.

Maybe she should feel as guilty as Kira. She could have been more perceptive. After all, she was Gin's oldest friend, and although she now knows better than to assume she knew him well at all, she was certainly the person other than his co-conspirators who could have guessed that something was amiss. Presumably there were things that not even Aizen could conceal, at times. If she had cared enough...

She has never been given to ifs. Today really is a strange day for her.

"...I think, well, I know..."

At first she hardly hears him. "Hm?"

"I know that he... He really did care about Matsumoto-san," says Kira, in a brisk tone of voice that manages to almost hide his despair. His fingers tighten hard on the fabric of his robe. "I'm not bl- I could see that."

Matsumoto shakes her head and pours him a cup of the sake she has been secretly saving for years. "I don't think it matters much at this point who he cared for," she says, careful to make herself sound light, almost cheerful. "Now let's have a drink, alright? I could use some alchohol."

"Yes," replies Kira, "...that would be great. Thank you."

As he takes a first tentative sip, Matsumoto realizes that for the first time she is playing the comforter to someone else. She doesn't dislike it as much as she thought she would have.

She raises her cup. "Cheers."

END 


End file.
